Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

I don't really remember buying this record. Most albums I own I can tell you exactly where and roughly when I bought them, but I'm drawing a blank with this one. I just checked my spreadsheet and it was in a second hand shop in Oxford in 2005 - if I had to guess a few options, that would have been one of them, but I wasn't really very sure.

Piecing events together from other records gigs and memories, I was in Oxford on the way to London for a gig, a trip that also stopped off in Brighton - I was dragging my friend Thom along to see Pop Will Eat Itself, and he was visiting his girlfriend (now wife) in Oxford, then driving back to Brighton; we then got the train up to London for the PWEI show (which he hated - things got much easier when I realised it was better to just go to shows on my own than try to find someone who wants to go). I also bought a bunch of great records in Brighton before heading back up to Lancaster.

The shop was apparently in Gloucester Green, which is only of note because I ended up living in Gloucester Green nine years later when we moved to Oxford. The shop had long closed, but I had no idea where it was anyway - my knowledge of the layout of Oxford was non-existent before moving here, having always been shown around my friends at university in the city. It was a nice little shop with loads of second-hand vinyl. I also found this very tattered copy of Lit's A Place in the Sun. If I remember correctly, it was two-for-£10 on almost all the vinyl, and Badmotorfinger was £9, so I got the Lit record for £1. This LP is in remarkably good condition despite its age (it still has a sticker on from when it was originally bought in HMV for £9.45) and worth a good amount more than that now.

Anyway, three paragraphs in and I haven't even mentioned what a huge album Badmotorfinger is. I honestly couldn't choose between Superunknown and Badmotorfinger as my favourite Soundgarden album. When I saw them the second time and they decided to play Superunknown in full, I was ecstatic because I really love that album (it was the first of theirs I bought), but if I hadn't seen them a first time when they played some of these songs I'd have been a little gutted (although, in truth, my memories of the first time I saw Soundgarden are somewhat murky due to excessive alcohol consumption). Most of my favourite Soundgarden songs are across those two albums.

Badmotorfinger is a much, much heavier album than Superunknown, so much so it's hard to believe they're consecutive albums. The sticker on the sleeve says "The most brilliant band to hit the planet since Slayer unleashed Hell Awaits", which says a lot - in 1991 Soundgarden were being compared to metal bands, and Badmotorfinger is a metal album; after that point they were thrown in with grunge bands and certainly had more of that style about them.

But we've still not really got down to the details. Jesus Christ Pose: fucking hell, what a song. The drums racing a long, the guitar that genuinely sounds dangerous and Chris's vocals are some of their best. I've turned the volume up as loud as I think I can right now without waking the sleeping baby, but I kinda feel this is the sort of song I want her awake to listen to (she's heard it a bunch - when Chris died I made a mix cd for the car and this was pretty near the start). Rusty Cage into Outshined into Slaves & Bulldozers into Jesus Christ Pose is an obscenely strong way to start the album. If it wasn't for the fact there's not a dud on the album you'd have thought someone would have warned them about blowing their load too soon. You do wonder how they can possibly keep that momentum going, but they find a way. (And that is maybe the only criticism of Superunknown - there are a couple of songs that could be skipped). Searching With My Good Eye Closed and Drawing Flies (with the inspired addition of a brass section) are some highlights on the second side.

Badmotorfinger was the second Soundgarden album I got, about a year and a half after getting Superunknown - both on cd for £5 from a record fair. I continued to buy their back-catalogue over the following years, but nothing really came to close to that first pair of albums I heard. By 2005, Badmotorfinger had already established itself as enough of a classic to require a vinyl purchase. The vinyl probably hasn't had that many plays because I had the cd, hence the struggle to remember buying it. Still, very glad to have it in the collection.

Format: 12"
Tracks: 12
Cost: £9 second hand
Bought: Oxford
When: 22/01/05
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

KEN Mode - Venerable

The story of how I first heard of KEN Mode might be the most unusual "how I got into a band" stories yet. Back when I lived in Cardiff we had a friend called Roscoe, who was an interesting character. "Character" is an appropriate word, because I was never sure we were really seeing the actual Roscoe. One thing he got really into was making fake Facebook accounts of different people and having them interact with each other, albeit in quite tangental ways. There was a retired Swiss tennis pro who I think was having an affair with the girlfriend of another character. It was all very complex. I was never sure he actually had a job because the various Facebook profiles looked like they took up a lot of his day.

One night in Le Pub he introduced us to a game he called "Fish Band Names", where you had to replace some part of a band's name with a fish ("And You Will Know Us By the Whale of Dead", for example). This kept a handful of us entertained for most of the night. I think there was a hardcore show on, but we spent most of the night downstairs thinking of Fish Band Names. Over the following week more of these got sent around by text message, and the game eventually became Bread Band Names (which wasn't easy).

A few years later I saw some people playing Star Wars Band Names on Twitter and sent some highlights to Hugh, who'd also been there that night in Le Pub. He replied with a couple of good additions, including "Obi-Wan KEN-Mode-y" which became the first time I'd ever heard of the band KEN Mode. Of course, a shorter version of that story is "Hugh mentioned them to me", but where's the fun in that?

A year or so later, KEN Mode were touring and playing The Black Heart in London, a venue I always really enjoy visiting - I like metal bars and they tick all the boxes of being a metal bar well - solid metal on the jukebox, good beers, great band posters on the wall and genuinely interesting gigs upstairs. I'd moved to Oxford by that point, but made the journey back to London for the show.

I'd listened to some KEN Mode in the time between Hugh's Star Wars pun and then, but not properly got into the band. Five years later, I still wouldn't say I'm properly into the band, but that's because it's hard to break your way into their particular style of noise. I like what I've heard a lot - their 2018 album made it into my top-ten albums of the year - but I just never see their records around. I can understand why though, not many shops I often visit sell a lot of metal, and less so noisy, niche Canadian noise-metal. I'd definitely buy more of their albums if it was easier.

At the end of the show, feeling thoroughly pummelled and beaten by the music, I decided to buy an LP. They had released five albums at this point, and had at least four of them on the merch table. I did what I often do in these scenarios and just picked one at random (but asked for it with the confidence of someone who definitely knew they wanted that exact album). The one I picked happened to be this copy of Venerable (which I now know is the 2012 French reissue with different artwork, which looks great).

This turned out to be a great choice, because the single most memorable song that night was one called Never Was; by chance I'd picked the album with that song on it and I was very pleased when I played it the next day to discover that fact. There are other great songs on there - Book of Muscle and The Irate Jumbuck in particular - but Never Was is a step above. Over the course of 8 minutes they verge on doom metal with a slow repeating riff that Shellac would be proud of and whispered verses leading you into a false sense of security before the crushing chorus of "No God / Never was". In that chorus it's hard to believe that all that noise is the work of just three people.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £10 new
Bought: Gig, London
When: 14/10/14
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: None

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Lie Down in the Light

There was a period of time when I bought lots of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy records, and a period where I slowed way down and tried to make much more considered purchases from his back-catalogue. William Oldham's music is not something I universally love; in fact, he veers into territory that I don't like almost as much as he makes incredible music.

On one hand, he released I See a Darkness, one of the best and most interesting folk records I've ever heard, not to mention the darkest. I also have a couple of great live albums of his, and I really enjoyed the album with The Cairo Gang. On the other hand, I can't listen to Sings Palace's Greatest Hits, and there are a good handful of albums that are completely unremarkable. This album, the third of his I bought (after I See a Darkness and There Is No One That Will Take Care of You), falls into the latter category.

I bought this album about a week after it came out as my Tuesday-record-from-Spillers that week. The first disappointment (albeit a small one) was that it wasn't blue vinyl, which would have been such an obvious choice. The much bigger disappointment was that none of the edginess of the two albums I knew was present - despite the two being very different, both had a lot going on that made them interesting; Lie Down in the Light was kinda bland, with little excitement. It did nothing for me then, and every attempt to get into since has been equally underwhelming.

There was one incident that meant the album made some impression on me, but it literally the only one - in May 2012 we saw Bonnie 'Prince' Billy play a special show with Trembling Bells in the Union Chapel in London, although it was much more "Trembling Bells featuring Will Oldham" than the other way around. I suspect the vast majority in attendance that night also wished it was the other way around (they supported him when I saw him play an incredible set in Shepherd's Bush in 2010). I was there with a handful of friends, three of whom decided halfway through that it was so bad that they'd rather be in the pub. Somehow, the message didn't make it the whole way across the pew so Rich and I didn't know they were actually leaving, but probably would have watched the rest of the show anyway.

After they left, the band played the best song of the evening by far, a song I later realised was So Everyone from this album. I recognised the song; despite not having played this album a huge amount, the catchy chorus had lodged itself in my mind and I made an effort to figure out which album it was from when I got home. I was surprised that it was from Lie Down in the Light, partly because I didn't think I'd played it enough to remember any of it, but partly because I didn't think there was anything on the album remotely memorable. I stand corrected - it has one memorable song. If I was making a compilation of my favourite Will Oldham songs, it'd make the cut.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £12 new
Bought: Spillers Records, Cardiff
When: 27/05/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: None

Manic Street Preachers - Journal for Plague Lovers

I've recently come to the conclusion that I'll never actually get into this album. It's been ten years of periodically trying, only each time to give up once again. The following will probably be some of the least positive things I'll ever write on here about the Manic Street Preachers. I'm sorry; I do love them, but just not on this record.

To cut straight to the point, Journal for Plague Lovers sounds to me like an album of demos that were never fully realised. There are two tracks on the record that I hear and think "this is a song" - the title track and William's Last Words - the rest are underwhelming. Some have a riff or a chorus that works, but that's it and it's not enough to carry the song. More than half of the songs are under three minutes in length, which is very short for a band who have written some of the best six-minute songs ever (Motorcycle Emptiness, The Everlasting) and do incredible things when at their fullest sounding as a band. The demos they've been so good at providing with each recent album are fascinating, but rarely ever a patch on the final product. I wonder if there was more depth and potential to these songs that for whatever reason they just never extracted?

The album had three particularly interesting features - it was written entirely using Richey's lyrics that he gave to Nicky before he disappeared; it was produced by Steve Albini - not a producer you'd immediately think of the Manics to go to; and they promised there would be no singles. Each of those deserves a little dwelling on.

Was the Manics using Richey's old lyrics a cheap attempt to reignite some old passion? I don't think so (but that's partly because I can't see that passion here), and I wouldn't like to say such a thing. It certainly threw more red flags for me than it did get me excited. I don't think the magic in the first three (and a half) albums was Richey's lyrics in isolation - I think the partnership between him and Nicky can't be ignored, not to mention that I suspect there was more to the process than lyrics-to-song without a bit of back and forth. A lot of these songs struggle to fit around the lyrics, making me think that the lyrics must have usually adapted to fit the songs more. The revival of the backwards R's and the use of more of Jenny Saville's artwork did, however, seem like a cheap way to make people draw comparisons to The Holy Bible though.

Steve Albini is an interesting choice as a producer for any band, but particularly one I can't imagine he would ordinarily have much to do with - they move in entirely independent circles and he is known for his strong opinions on music (and beyond). That said, I read an article a while ago where he noted that working with them was memorable and enjoyable, so I guess it was better than I'd assumed. Of course, we know Richey was really into Nirvana near the end, and Albini produced In Utero. Is the album influenced by Albini's production? Quite possibly - he famously prefers to be called an engineer, and these songs certainly aren't over-produced. I can imagine a more traditional (for the Manics) recording experience resulting in a very different album. I wonder if his hands-off approach didn't really work with the band.

As for the choice to release no singles, I feel like that is less a choice and more a function of the fact that there are no stand-out singles in these 13 tracks. Send Away the Tigers isn't my favourite album, but the singles there were at least songs you can get a bit excited about - Your Love Alone is Not Enough has aged incredibly well and I enjoy hearing it live every time they play it. Could you follow that up with any of these songs? No, not well at least. Peeled Apples starts well with a quote and a great bassline from Nicky, but has a remarkably flat chorus; James just about picks out a harmony in Richey's often disjointed lyrics in This Joke Sport Severed (which is why I can't believe these lyrics would have stayed the same had Richey been involved in the songwriting process); All is Vanity has the best chorus on the album, but otherwise I can't say much about it. For a band who have released some truly monumental singles in their career, to have so few is quite something.

The highlight is undoubtably William's Last Words, which stands out from the rest by a mile, and not (just) because Nicky sings (and sings so well!). At just over four minutes it's the longest song on the album by a good margin and feels like an actual song (chicken vs egg - is it a "song" because it's longer, or is it longer because it's a song). Musically there's some strings that add so much to the song and really hammer home the fact that the rest of the album is missing the extra "fullness".

Anyway, I rushed out to buy Journal for Plague Lovers the day it came out - I picked it up in Spillers along with a small poster of the artwork, which I still have rolled up somewhere. I played it and struggled a bit. It got filed away and I forgot about it a bit. I bought the double-cd a year later (for a fiver in the sale) and realised I'd barely listened to the LP. But having the mp3s still didn't help crack my way into the album. Some years later I was challenging myself to list all the Manics albums in order, and forgot this one entirely. I know a lot of fans really, really love this album but I'm not one of those (although that is one of the things I love so much about the band - a fanbase with passionately different opinions of what their best work is). I'd go so far as to rate it second-to-last in order of my favourite Manics albums (ahead of Lifeblood, of course). But even then that doesn't seem fair - Lifeblood feels like an album, but I can't get past thinking these are twelve demos and one excellent Nicky Wire song.

Possibly the worst part of this whole saga is that it marked the start of a period of time where I'd pretty much given up on the band. For a while I stopped buying all their singles and really tuned out, which is quite something for a band I'd loved for such a long time. More on how I came back out the other side of that is a story for another time though.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 13
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Spillers' Records, Cardiff
When: 18/05/09
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Explosions in the Sky - How Strange, Innocence

Explosions' first album - How Strange, Innocence - was the last one I bought of the four they'd released at the time. In the two years since I'd bought All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone I'd gotten pretty heavily into them and seen them play at the All Tomorrow's Parties they'd curated (although it was The Paper Chase that led me to know about that festival). One afternoon in Fopp in Bristol I found a copy of this album on cd for £10 (the 2005 reissue, not original, of course) which was a lot by Fopp-standards, but I very keenly added it to the pile of cds I was buying, probably putting some others back to make space (and not blow all my money) because of it. I can't remember why I was in Bristol, but it might have been to meet potential PhD supervisors - that would have been around that time for sure.

My main memory of this album, however, is from that summer. It's crucial to remember this was 2009, so basically before smartphones and certainly before streaming platforms; going on holiday or even a road trip meant needing to be prepared when it came to playing music other than the radio - if you packed cds, a cassette-to-headphone-jack adapter, a headphone-to-RCA adapter and an mp3 player, you might be able to play some music you want to hear. So I always took all those things. That summer we went to Devon, and by plugging my shitty little USB stick mp3 player into the back of the TV (via an audio cable) in our rental place, we were able to listen to music and, crucially, only really my music. The mp3 player had a capacity of something comical, like 2GB, so I was frequently having to change the albums on there.

For the holiday I'd thrown on How Strange, Innocence, and pressed play on it one rainy afternoon when we were all hanging around. After a song or two, Hugh asked me who it was and said something along the lines of "why is it so out of tune/time?" - I can't remember which, but he was pretty scathing about their musicianship at this point. Without the context of the cd sleeve explaining that the band were also pretty embarrassed by it, it wasn't maybe the strongest of their albums to play, but these were the problems of limited 2009-era technology. Of course, having no musical ability whatsoever, whatever criticism Hugh had of their playing, I hadn't noticed it (so much so I can't remember if he complained about their timing or tuning). I was enjoying the album - I guess I appreciated it had a certain roughness, but just felt that added to it's charm.

Despite the band's (and Hugh's) opinion of it, there are some great songs here. Magic Hours is probably the highlight, with the incredibly fuzzed out guitars that creep in on-and-off before taking over in the inevitable post-rock explosion. Glittering Blackness is another great one, although I will concede that those huge drums need to be way louder. Remember Me as a Time of Day might be the most Explosions-in-the-Sky title ever written.

As soon as I read the back-story of this album, I knew that getting a vinyl copy was out of the question - if the original cd sells for an obscene price, the only word for the 2004 vinyl is "terrifying". Luckily, Temporary Residence realised the same and have reissued the album on vinyl so we can all have complete Explosion back-catalogues on our shelves, which makes me very happy. As is always the case, the package is lovely - two colours of vinyl, neither of which words quite do justice, a triple gatefold sleeve, and the story of the history of the album from the 2005 cd reissue etched onto the fourth side of vinyl. I would have been happy with double black vinyl stuffed into a single sleeve, so this extra effort was very much appreciated.

Format: Double 12", triple gatefold, insert
Tracks: 7
Cost: £30.97 new
Bought: Temporary Residence Records website
When: 19/08/19
Colour: Light blue splatter / dark blue splatter
Etching: Recording notes etched into side D
mp3s: Download code

Rage Against the Machine - The People of the Sun

I remember seeing this 10" a bunch of times in the shop I bought it from before eventually deciding to get it. Over the years I'd been going in there sometimes they'd have a copy and other times they wouldn't. On all the times it was there before May 2003 they also had a bunch of other records I wanted to buy instead, so it never made it into my purchases. But as the years went by, the amount of money I was spending on records increased, so it was no surprise that I did finally pick it up. I also bought Siamese Dream and Pretty Hate Machine on vinyl that day, so it was a strong day for a very particular part of my record collection.

The record itself is a strange one - I never quite got the bottom of why it was released on Revelation Records, a label I wouldn't have thought would have normally had much to do with band like Rage. They'd been on a major label from the start and Epic released the cd and 7" versions of single. At the time I thought it was odd that it was on a record label that I wasn't that familiar with (of course, I eventually got to know Revelation Records well), and that a single would be so readily available so many years after it was released. I think in a lot of ways I stopped caring about the answers to these questions - they don't keep me awake at night.

It's a nice little record for a number of reasons - you've got some live songs, a collaboration/cover with Chuck D from Public Enemy and some non-album songs. The three album tracks are all from Evil Empire, which in 2019 has become the Rage album I play the most often - I think its underdog status back in the day helps, partly because I didn't over do it back in the early 2000's; I know the self-titled album like the back of my hand, and whilst The Battle of Los Angeles had some huge songs, they weren't the lasting classics I thought they'd be. People of the Sun and Bulls on Parade are the studio versions and both great singles. Without a Face is a huge late-album gem and the outro never fails to put a smile on my face. The live recording is a great reminder of how incredible they were to watch.

The other songs are fascinating - with Chuck D they cover Public Enemy's Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos and segue pretty much seemlessly into Zapata's Blood, a great song that often appears live, but never in the studio (at least, in my limited research). Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox is a funny one - an Allen Ginsburg poem set to music, recorded live in Detroit in 1993. At 8-minutes, the duration is actually one of the most interesting things about it - when forced to stretch themselves over more than 5-minutes (due to the length of the poem) the band almost lean into post-rock. The relationship between Zach's vocals and the three instruments is perfect - when Zach gets louder, the music is there rising up and teasing him on; and when he does get loud, he shouts in a way you never hear elsewhere. But he's not necessarily leading everything - Tom's guitars show hints of the peaks to come from early on, as do Brad's drums. Like I said, almost post-rock in the way it holds back but gives hints of whats to come throughout. I like it. Makes you wonder what could have happened if they'd played more music like this - I don't imagine it would have been anywhere near as popular, but it would have made for very interesting listening. Worth the entry fee for that song alone.

Format: 10", insert
Tracks: 5
Cost: £9 new
Bought: FM Music, Southampton
When: 03/05/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none

Texas is the Reason - Do You Know Who You Are? The Complete Collection

This is potentially going to be quite a short review (but I do tend to ramble for however long the record is, so we'll see). This is the reissue of Texas is the Reason's only album Do You Know Who You Are?, which doubles as a "complete collection" as they've included a second disc including all the other songs the band had recorded. I wrote about the album itself seven years ago here. The self-titled 7" (which I wrote about five years ago) forms the final three songs, so there's just four songs left to write about. Breezy, right.

But before we get into that, we should dwell on the terrifying fact that I wrote those blog posts so many years ago. I'd been listening to Texas is the Reason for four years when I first wrote about them here and it's now been nearly double that amount of time. The truth is, as much as I really like these songs, I always thought I'd have got more into them by now. If you played me a random album track and asked me to tell you the title, I'd struggle. For an album I've had for 11 years and played countless times, I always felt I'd know it better than I do. I think certain albums (and even whole genres to an extent) are just harder to break down sometimes. I think it's safe to say that I'll never know these songs well enough to put a name to them (luckily, I rarely get challenged to do such things, so it's ok).

As another side note, when I wrote about the album I tagged the band in the tweet I sent, and they retweeted it - this was the first time any of my posts had gained any real traction on Twitter. Even now, it's my fifth most-read post. I learnt the word "vignette" from the tweet they sent about it. In that post I wrote about hopefully seeing Texas is the Reason, something I did finally do on their 2013 tour in London (and I have a great poster from the show too). I didn't say it in that post, but Something to Forget (Version II) is a great song.

So, on to those four songs I mentioned. Every Little Girl's Dream is a new song and feels very different - the production is clearly very far from the sound of the album, the vocals are less smooth, there's a whole bunch of echo and it just feels heavier. I like it. It's also wordier than any of the album songs, as is very clear in the huge block of printed lyrics. When Rock 'n' Roll Was Just a Baby is another new song and perfectly fine. The same can be said for Blue Boy, from the split with The Promise Ring - perfectly nice but not very memorable. Something to Forget (Version I) is from the split with Samian and a much rougher recording than the album one - it adds a bit of charm, but misses the excellent "This is only fun for me" bit in the outro. Strangely, The Promise Ring and Samian are two bands I almost certainly should have got into, but simply never did. There's still time mind you, but I think I may have missed the boat on those ones.

The package is very nice and makes it a worthwhile purchase even if you have the original LP and 7" - double orange vinyl and a complete list of all the gigs they played (up to 2012). The LP is clearly a new pressing too as the last album track, Jack With One Eye, is on the third side of vinyl rather than squeezed onto one record (although at 38 minutes it should fit comfortably). It includes a download code for the whole lot too, which is nice - when I play the album on my iPod or at work, I listen to these mp3s because 38 minutes of Texas is the Reason is often not quite enough.

Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, insert
Tracks: 16
Cost: £0 new
Bought: Gift
When: 25/12/13
Colour: Transparent orange
Etching: Side A: "Fellas, coincidence and fate figure largely in our lives"
mp3s: Download code